The Los Angeles Times recently revisited their ‘L.A. 2013′ cover story from April 3, 1988 by making a PDF of the story available for download.

One of the ‘futurists and experts’ they spoke to for the story was the legendary Syd Mead, whose drawings accompanied the piece.

Lots of bold predictions of course, like your usual 200 story ‘mega rises’ and a sports utility vehicle that can adapt from a 2 seat sports car into a beach buggy via a ‘plug-in module.’

But the one that stuck with me gets dropped right in the first paragraph: “about a third of the residents have already headed out to their jobs, as required by Los Angeles County’s mandatory staggered work plan.”

YES PLEASE.

As an LA resident who had a horrible run-in with the 405 yesterday, I’m all for it. Make it so.

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“about a third of the residents have already headed out to their jobs, as required by Los Angeles County’s mandatory staggered work plan.”

Somebody’s not read their JG Ballard! Have a look at the story Chronopolis at this link – http://bit.ly/14bqAd8 – about a city where this was taken to extremes, different groups not only had staggered work days but set times to do anything – down to the minute…

“As the population climbed the first serious attempts were made to stagger hours; workers in certain areas started the day an hour earlier or later than those in others. Their railway passes and car number plates were coloured accordingly, and if they tried to travel outside the permitted periods they were turned back. Soon the practice spread; you could only switch on your washing machine at a given hour, post a letter or take a bath at a specific period.'”

@Rob – I don’t think anything mandatory would work, mostly due to the mandatory element of such a system. It would be perceived as inflexible, preventing people from doing what they wanted (despite that, generally, they’d only being commuting in the rush hour anyway), and nightmare scenarios like that depicted in the link would be thrown around, only angering people!

However, any efforts to encourage flexibility in peoples’ working days should only be encouraged. Telecommuting for those that can, flexible working hours and shift patterns – these can only help.

That last suggestion is basically staggering people, only without the mandatory bit…

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Tom Mraz says:

I heard about an upcoming exhibition in LA (talked about here on Australian national radio!) which sounds like it paints an incredible picture of the LA that could have been. Some of modern times best architects drew up plans to ensure a bright future for the city, most of which were rejected. It’s fascinating to ponder what could have been.

H76 says:

I find it ironic these ideas that try to bend peoples’ habits to compensate for an archaic system rather than change fundamentally. A staggered work week? Much better than more mass transit infrastructure to lessen the impact of single occupants stagnating on cramped highways in their cages of steel and glass.